Troop greeters movie honored at Texas festival

A documentary film about the troop greeters at Bangor International Airport was named honorable mention Tuesday night in its category at a prestigious film festival in Texas.

“The Way We Get By,” which was directed by Old Town native Aron Gaudet, was competing in the documentary feature category in the South By Southwest, or SXSW, Film Festival, which is held annually in Austin, Texas.

Eight films were entered in the documentary feature category. The 2009 SXSW Film Festival consisted of 133 feature-length films, including 57 world premieres, selected from 1,511 submissions.

“The Way We Get By” features local residents Jerry Mundy, Bill Knight and Joan Gaudet, Aron Gaudet’s mother, who are BIA troop greeters.

The film made its world premiere during the SXWS festival, although a 93-minute, rough-cut version of “The Way We Get By” was shown at The Strand Theatre in Rockland as part of last September’s Camden International Film Festival.

The winning documentary feature film was “45365,” which is about daily life in the town of Sidney, Ohio.

“Going into the festival, we knew we had a strong lineup to be proud of, filled with some of the smartest and most talented filmmakers working at the studio level down to the tiniest of micro budgets,” Film Conference and Festival Producer Janet Pierson said in a release, “but audiences, industry and press are all saying this is their favorite batch of movies in years.”